Seven Little Australians – Tea With Ethel Turner

Christmas 1921 with Ethel Turner and the Sunbeamers

No doubt, it won’t surprise you that I never intended to spend Christmas 2021 with Ethel Turner reconstructing Christmas 1921. To be very honest, I’d planned to spend Christmas Eve at Church, and Christmas Day with the whole shebang over at my aunt’s place. A regular Christmas over there can attract over thirty people with bodies in and out of the pool, and enough food to sink a battleship.

Me- Christmas 2021 overlooking Terrigal Beach

However, covid struck again. On Christmas Day alone there were 6 379 cases of covid detected in NSW. Church was cancelled entirely. Mum and Dad are in their late 70’s and went into isolation, and decided not to go to the big family Christmas. I couldn’t be sure our kids wouldn’t infect the family in Sydney, or that they’d unwittingly infect us. So, the four of us stayed home, and were mighty grateful for the three dogs to add to the head count. It was our year to go with wisdom from the Wizard of Oz: “There’s no place like home.”

Anyway, as I said, I didn’t intend to go back in time and spend Christmas 1921 with Ethel Turner and her band of Sunbeamers. However, that’s where the research trail took me. Besides, there’s been a lot of talk comparing 2020 to the 1919 Spanish flu pandemic, and I’ve just brought it forward another year.

Before I launch into Ethel Turner’s 1921, a bit of context might be helpful. I’ve covered that over at my other blog, Beyond the Flow, here: https://beyondtheflow.wordpress.com/2021/12/28/christmas-1921/

However, Charles Dickens seemed to sum it up well with his timeless genius:

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way.”

Moving on to Ethel Turner…

Born on the 24^th January, 1870, Ethel Turner was 51 years old in 1921, and a year younger than I am now. She was married to Judge Herbert Curlewis and they were living at their home in Avenel, Mosman, Sydney although they spent Christmas 1921 at Palm Beach. Daughter, Jean, was twenty-three, and son Adrian was twenty and studying Law at Sydney University. By Christmas 1921, Ethel Turner had had 22 of her handwritten novels published, and King Anne was her offering for the year. She was famous.

However, for Ethel Turner it wasn’t the empty fame of celebrity. Rather, there was a strong sense of purpose and a desire to make a difference, and do good. While I can be dangerous to interpret Three Little Maids as being purely biographical, there is also much truth and Dolly (who is said to be Ethel) made this statement on becoming an author:

“One night…I felt I must do something. I felt I couldn’t just go on doing little things always,-staying at home and helping, and going to dances, and playing tennis. I used to think I should like to go as a missionary, – not to China, of course, only somewhere here where people were very poor and miserable. But that night I didn’t seem to want anything but to write books that people would love to read, and that might do them some good.[1]”

This aspect of Ethel Turner is often lost….the visionary, the world-changer, the woman who had experienced severe financial hardship as a child and travelled across the world for a better life, worked hard and overcome. She’s simply viewed through the lens of Seven Little Australians as though she were a one book wonder. Indeed, it appears that the massive difference she made to the lives of children through the series of children’s pages she edited has been forgotten, along with how she nurtured the artistic and literary abilities of younger generations through these pages. She was such an inspiration!

The trouble is that it’s very hard to condense an inspiration into a few lines or words to satisfy those who don’t want to immerse themselves more fully into the longer story. However, in this instance, can I caution you to sit down. Make yourself a cup of tea, and in the words of the great Molly Meldrum: “Do yourselves a favour!”

We’re going to pick up with Ethel Turner on the 20^th November 1921. Sunbeams had only been launched on the 9^th October, 1921, and just over a month old, and still in the nest. Yet, that didn’t stop Ethel Turner from launching an ambitious plan to make a difference that Christmas:

“FROM A CHAIR IN THE SUN

ABOUT SUN FAIRIES

Dear Young People, — One of the many tastes we have in common, you and I, Is our love for conjuring tricks. Here is one I particularly want you to try. Take a child with the corners of its mouth right down and its eyes running over with tears (there are any amount of them in the hospitals and crowded back streets, alas). Go up close to it, and with a quick sleight-of-hand slip into its fingers a tiny doll as pretty as a fairy. In less than half a minute the eyes will dry and the mouth corners go up. This trick has never been known to fail. So now then, let us do it together. Your part is to buy a tiny celluloid doll or kewpie, dross it in something very fairylike — gay and pretty, or comical as an elf — put it in a, tiny box, and post or hand it in to “Sunbeams.” My part will be to find the children in the hospitals and back streets about Christmas time. I shall also examine the dolls carefully — we will call them Sun Fairies— and give three prizes of half-a-crown each to the three most attractive ones, and six “Sun” honor cards. You need send no coupon with this competition, as the doll will cost you anything from twopence to sixpence. Send December 1st.

Yours ever,

Ethel Turner[2]”

Ethel Turner received an enthusiastic and touching response to her call for contributions. On the 11^th December, 1921, she wrote:

“THE SUN FAIRIES

ROOMFUL OF WONDERFUL DOLLS DAME MARGARET DAVIDSON’S WINNERS

The response to the “Sun” fairies competition was splendid and many little “Sunbeams” will be cheered by the really wonderful little dolls sent in… It was a lovely spirit which prompted the competitors to send in the dolls — they were not concerned with winning prizes, but with doing something with their own hands which would give pleasure to children, to whom dainty dolls are a rare and precious luxury. Many of the children marked their entries: “Not sent in for a prize,” and pinned to almost every doll was a pretty little greeting to the recipient. They sat about all over the floor and the chairs and tables rather impatient in their boxes, just as trapped butterflies might be; they were eager to be gone upon their task of carrying sunshine. They were dressed in silk and spangles, in little frilly skirts of lace, in bridal gowns; in elf costumes; there were little mother fairies with tiny children around them, father fairies, fussy and important, fairies with opera cloaks on, and carrying bags; baby fairies, red riding hood fairies; one or two arrived with their beds and bedding, a few with suit-cases for the week-end and complete wardrobes. Wendy came, together with John and Michael, and Peter Pan. And wands! There were enough wands to have enchanted all Sydney and turned it to happy ways had they been held up. And no one, not any one, had forgotten the pretty little card with “From one Sunbeam to another” and other affectionate greetings. Dorothy Makin’s box of dolls, which won first prize, lacked only the bride groom to make the wedding party complete. But then it is so difficult to make a fairy-like creature of a man who should be dressed strictly in black. It was a rainbow wedding, and the bride chose ivory satin for her gown. She also had an overskirt of lace, and trimmed her whole frock with pearls. She wore the usual wreath and veil, and carried a bouquet of white blossoms and a fan. Her maids were frocked in rose, mauve, coral and eau-de-nil silk net, and wore quaint filets round their heads. Just by way of being different, they all carried fans instead of bouquets. Five little fairies, in five little boxes with five little Christmas cards, were sent by Betty Blake, who was second prize-winner. Betty dressed her fairies in white lace, showing beribboned petticoats. Glinting beads of gold and silver shone like spangles on the little dolls which will gladden the hearts of sick children on Christmas Day. Betty Grimm’s Sunbeamer was dressed in her party frock of rose-colored silk net, and she carried a lovely curling white feather fan. (But even fairies cannot live in party frocks all the time, so Betty sent along a box full of neatly made clothes for everyday wear, and did not forgot even a tiny tin of powder to powder her nose.[3]”

Of course, this touching story of generosity and human kindness is not complete without hearing about the sun fairies final destinations:

“THE SUN FAIRIES: How The Kiddies Loved Them”

I know that all of you who made a “Sun” Fairy will be delighted to hear how much joy they gave to the children who received them. Here are two letters which tell you all about them:–A.I.F. Wives and Children’s Holiday Association.

Furlong House, Narrabeen. Dear Sunbeams, — The dear little sun fairies arrived quite safely, and as fresh as when’ they left the designers’ hands. I am sure if the little donors could have seen the pleasure they afforded when received on Christmas Day they would be delighted to know they were indeed sun fairies in so much as they made radiance shine from each receiver’s face. With all good wishes to the Sunbeams from all the soldiers’ children at “Furlough House,” Yours sincerely, Ruby Fowle, Matron The second letter comes from Mrs Lyster Ormsby, who in the crowded streets of the city has for years sought to bring joy and sunlight into the lives of the little children there. Soup Kitchen for Little Children, 40 Burton-street, Darlinghurst. Dear Little Sunbeams,— I want to thank you for the dainty little ladies, fairies and babies the came to the Soup Kitchen during Christmas week. They came all neatly tucked away in a box, and was told they were to be given to some of the poor little’ girlies that I know as presents from “one Sunbeam to another. Well it happened that some of my little pals were hanging round when I unpacked your box and if you could have heard the “O-o-ohs” and “A-a-ahs” of admiration that came from them as I drew each dolly out of the box, you would have felt that you had sent a real sunbeam along. I gave your dollies away in many different quarters, and I feel sure you will be glad to know that each and every one received a warm and loving welcome from the new mistress. Among my little Soup Kitchen Girlies was one who has just left school and so felt too big for a doll. She always has a real live baby in mind-but still I could tell by the look in her face that she was just envying all the smaller girls; so I picked out a tiny kewpie doll that had been so prettily dressed in baby frills and I said: “I know you’re fourteen, Alice, and too big for dolls — (she thinks she is, you know) – but this is a Kewpie for luck and it goes on the rail of your bedstead. Would you like it?” She just loved it, and rushed off home to put it on her bed right away, “Good-bye, little Sunbeams, and a happy new year to you all from Inys Ormsby.[4]”

And now we’ll back peddle just a little, and read Ethel Turner’s Christmas Day letter to her Sunbeamers:

A VERY MERRY XMAS FROM A CHAIR IN THE SUN

Christmas Day

Dear Young People,—

Do you know Anna? What Anna? Merry Christmas anna happy New Year. Yes, I know this is the seventh time you have been asked this same joke, but that is the best about Christmas Day, isn’t it, there is such a rosy, kindly light everywhere, that you are ready to smile seven times at anything and everything. I hope that you are, every one of you, as happy as larks to-day: the boy with the sixpenny humming top, as well as the one with the expensive aeroplane. Happiness, real lark-like happiness, isn’t a thing to be bought with money; it is a thing right inside you. There is really an amazing amount of it lying about free in a sunshiny land like this; believe me it is not shut up in those expensive toyshops, pleasant though those places are. Happiness is just a little light, bubbling thing that you make for yourself, just as the lark makes its song. Good-bye till next week. Do you know Anna?

The Sunbeamer[5]

I hope you have been each to absorb each of these letters word by word, and truly absorb an Ethel Turner who might appear idealistic, utopian and off with the very fairies she was passing on. However, aim low has never had much of a ring to it, has it?!!

So, I hope you and yours are managing to find some of that lark-like happiness this Christmas and carry it into the New Year as well.

Best wishes,

Rowena Curtin

References

[1] Ethel Turner, `: Pg 302-303.

[2] Sun (Sydney, NSW : 1910 – 1954), Sunday 20 November 1921, page 2

[3] Sun (Sydney, NSW : 1910 – 1954), Sunday 11 December 1921, page 2

[4] Sun (Sydney, NSW : 1910 – 1954), Sunday 15 January 1922, page 2

[5] (Sydney, NSW : 1910 – 1954), Sunday 25 December 1921, page 22

A Writer’s Prayer – Ethel Turner.

At the outset, I warned you that I was going to expand your understanding of Ethel Turner, the English-Australian author of Seven Little Australians. Moreover, I might also have mentioned that I’m still reading her books as we go. So, I’m on a steep learning curve and a thrilling adventure, while also trying to nut out these posts. Life wasn’t meant to be easy, but it can be delightful!

At this point, I’m going to interrupt my own thoughts, and ask you how often do you read a book and find that the author has unwittingly expressed the innermost desires of your heart? They know you in a way that is so intimate and personal, that they couldn’t know you any better if they hopped inside your boots, put on your skin and merged with your heart and mind and became you? It doesn’t happen very often, does it? Yet, I keep having these moments where Ethel Turner knows me to the very deepest core of my being, and then some. I’ve shared a few of these moments already. However, while I was reading Three Little Maids, I found another.

I guess, in a way, I shouldn’t have been surprised. I have been writing seriously personally and professionally to some extent for years. I self-published an anthology of poetry back in 1992 called Locked Inside An Inner Labyrinth. I gave a solo reading in Paris at the Shakespeare Bookshop a few months later. However, since then, all’s been quiet on the publishing front. Of course, I want to have a book published. Indeed, multiple books. However, to have a book published, you first have to write it, and that’s my problem.

Anyway, I haven’t been above praying for this to come about, and recently after submitting my entry for the SBS Emerging Writers’ Competition, I had a heartfelt prayer for my story to win.

Indeed, it was that very week that I read Dolly’s equally impassioned prayer and I felt Ethel Turner had known me long before I was even born.

However, before I launch into her prayer, I’d better set the scene.

Three Little Maids was published in 1900. At this point, Ethel Turner had been married to Herbert Curlewis for six years and their daughter, Jean, was two years old. It has been said that elements of Three Little Maids are autobiographical, and that Phyl represents her older sister, Lillian; Dorothy or “Dolly” is herself and “Weenie” represents her younger half-sister, Jeannie “Rose”. The book is divided into two halves: Part I: Play Days and Part II: Scribbling Days. When the book starts out Phyl is ten, Dolly is eight and I don’t think an age is given for Weenie, but she could be five. By the end of the novel, the two older girls have left school and in real life, Ethel Turner was 24 when Seven Little Australians was published.

So, we’re well and truly into scribbling days and onto the second last chapter, when Dolly has received a very exciting letter. Barely able to speak through the excitement, she puffs:

“I’ve-I’ve-I’ve ___” she said, and excitement grasped her throat again, and she merely laughed and choked. Someone shook her again.”I’ve-written a b-book,” she said, thus urged.” 1.

We turn a few pages and then we come to the scene where Ethel Turner expressed the deepest, innermost cries of my heart:

“One night,” Dolly said, in the same low tone,” I felt I must do something. I felt I couldn’t just go on doing little things always,-staying at home and helping, and going to dances, and playing tennis. I used to think I should like to go as a missionary, – not to China, of course, only somewhere here where people were very poor and miserable. But that night I didn’t seem to want anything but to write books that people would love to read, and that might do them some good.”

“Well?” said Phyl, for Dolly had paused and was looking with glowing eyes at the happy sky.

“I just prayed, Phyl. It seemed so simple. God had said all things were possible to faith, – that we were to Ask, and we should receive, that all things whatsoever we should ask in prayer, believing, we should receive. He didn’t say we were to stop to consider if the thing we asked seemed impossible. He just said all things whatsoever. And I prayed, Phyl, that I might write books. All my life seemed to go in the prayer. And everything was – wonderful. I was kneeling by the window, and the sky seemed to bend down all around me, it was so warm and close. We have never known just what it is to have an own, Father, Phyl but I knew that night. And I prayed and prayed, and I knew. He was answering me. Of, Phyl, if you could have seen the stars, – so large and kind!” 2.

I must admit that I’ve wondered whether praying to get this elusive book of mine published, was worthy of prayer. It wasn’t as materialistic as asking for a Porsche (or in my case a restored Kombi). It also wasn’t asking God to strike down my enemies, which really doesn’t sit well with values like loving your neighbour or forgiving your enemy seventy times seven. However, Ethel Turner has unwittingly legitimised my prayer, and she even suggested that a book might even be able to “do good”. That writing a book isn’t just pure self-indulgence.

Moreover, and I think this is something Ethel Turner does really well and it particularly stands out in her Sunbeams columns in the Sun newspaper. She understands, empathises with and has compassion for people from all walks of life. In her own life, she has known poverty and desperate struggle. She lost her father as an infant, and her step-feather when she was eight. However, on the 28^th March, 1930 her beloved daughter Jean died of tuberculosis, and this is what saw her stop writing novels altogether.

So, is it any wonder that I like the thousands of children who have flocked to Ethel Turner throughout the years, would also find a kindred spirit in her? A soul mate? Indeed, perhaps the greatest thing of all the greatest thing of all….hope?!!

I’d love to hear your thoughts on what I have called: “A Writer’s Prayer”. I wonder if you also relate to it? In that case, I say a silent prayer for you, and if you could spare a few prayers for my illusive book and the competition entry I’d also be grateful. It’s not easy being a writer, and not adding oneself to the dreaded waste paper bin!

Many thanks and best wishes,

Rowena Curtin

PS The illustrations in this post came from my grandfather’s German Bible, which was a 21st birthday present from his grandfather, Heinrich August Haebich of Hahndorf in South Australia. He was a blacksmith, while my grandfather was a Lutheran pastor. We had the Bible on the altar at our wedding, and I’d scanned some of the etchings into the order of service.

Ethel Turner: Three Little Maids, Ward Locke & Co., London, p. 296.

2. Ibid. pp 302-303

Weekend Coffee Share – 3rd October, 2021.

Welcome to my first Weekend Coffee Share at my new blog – Tea With Ethel Turner. I will still be doing my regular coffee share over at Beyond the Flow, my regular blog. For those of you not familiar with the Weekend Coffee Share, it might sounds strange for me to be talking about coffee instead of tea. However, no one’s forcing anybody to drink coffee over there. You can drink whatever takes your fancy. I personally prefer tea. Start the day with two cups of Twining’s English Breakfast. Coffee no longer agrees with me, and these days I only have it intermittently and usually at a cafe.

So, how are you? I hope you’ve had a great week.

I started Tea With Ethel Turner on the 21st September, almost two weeks ago. Ethel Turner is considered one of Australia’s greatest and most loved children’s author’s That is, despite being born in England and her books being more suited to young adults, and equally suited to adults and being read to a younger child has often been the case. Ethel Turner had 40 novels published, the most famous being her first – Seven Little Australians, which is the first in a trilogy the Woolcot family. Strong comparisons were made with Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women series, and Ethel Turner has been called Australia’s Louisa May Alcott more than once.

I guess a very valid question is what has attracted a 52 year old woman who was up to her neck obsessively researching and writing up the biographies of Australia’ s WWI soldiers, to become so obsessed with Ethel Turner? It actually had very little to do with Seven Little Australians, and was more about the columns she wrote as “Chief Sunbeamer”. These were also directed at children, but openly discussed her desire to make the world a better place, and after the horrors of WWI, hope lay in the younger generation. I am also interested in how she grapples with the big issues of life, and a recurring theme is death, faith and the power of prayer. She was as much a philosopher as she was a writer.

I don’t know how many of you write fiction, and have created worlds for your characters as well as the characters themselves. I don’t know whether any of you have thought that you’re playing God bringing all these elements together, and deciding how it all plays out. Moreover, a bit like God found himself, your creations can take on a mind of their own, and do their own thing. Of course, as an author, you can always kill them off when they get too big for their boots. Ethel Turner has done that too. Indeed, she’s famous for it.

Anyway, I thought I’d list the posts to date because they really should be read in order although not every post will interest you, and some are geared more towards an Australian academic level. However, if you are struggling to understand any of the Australianisms, please feel free to ask for clarification. Hopefully, I have this covered love for the vernacular.

So here are the posts so far:

Welcome to Tea With Ethel Turner: https://wordpress.com/post/teawithethelturner.com/31

Ethel Turner’s Worldview:

https://wordpress.com/post/teawithethelturner.com/56

Ethel Turner’s Rainbow Poem: https://wordpress.com/post/teawithethelturner.com/77

The Beginnings of Ethel Turner: https://wordpress.com/post/teawithethelturner.com/104

The Mysterious Lucy Turner (Ethel’s Step-Sister): https://wordpress.com/post/teawithethelturner.com/139

Another Author in the Turner Family- Madeleine Board Honey

https://wordpress.com/post/teawithethelturner.com/159

A Short Story By Madeleine Board – “An Artist’s View”

https://wordpress.com/post/teawithethelturner.com/184

Another Short Story By Madeleine Board: “Two Birds With One Stone”.

https://wordpress.com/post/teawithethelturner.com/191

I must admit I’m rather chuffed about my efforts so far. I knew I’d been accumulating quite a lot of material, and I also wanted to connect with other fans of Ethel Turner, literature and aspiring authors who are keen to learn. Goodness knows where it’s all heading, but as much as this progress is reassuring, I’m concerned I’m creating a monster. How much work is this going to take? She wrote 40 novels and edited the children’s pages in multiple publications. This could go on forever, and as you may be aware this is my secondary research project. It’s not the main game, but there is some overlap.

Well, on that note, I’m heading off to make another cup of tea. This one’s turned cold.

Meanwhile, you might like to join us over at the Weekend Coffee Share, which is hosted by Natalie the Explorer https://natalietheexplorer.home.blog/

Best wishes,

Rowena

PS If you’re interested in writing short stories, I recommend you read the two stories I posted by Ethel Turner’s step-niece, Madeleine Board.

Welcome To Tea With Ethel Turner!

In so many ways, Australian author Ethel Turner needs no introduction. Yet, at the same time, as generation follows generation, a reminder is usually in order.

However, that is only partly why I am here.

Although Ethel Turner is best known for her iconic first novel: Seven Little Australians, she was so much more. That is what I’m aspiring to share and discuss here at Tea With Ethel Turner. Moreover, I want to assure you, this is not a one person job either. Indeed, it’s rather daunting researching and being so incredibly inspired by the author of 40 novels, diaries, children’s columns, poems, newspapers. There is no end to Ethel’s writings. She was incredibly prolific, and the quality of her work was sustained throughout her life, at least from what I’ve read so far.

I found myself revisiting Ethel Turner via quite an oblique route during the current Sydney covid lockdown, which began on the 26th June, 2021. I have been spending the best part of the last two years since the 2019 bushfire crisis and the subsequent covid pandemic researching and writing up the biographies of Australian soldiers initially serving in France, but then I later went backwards in time to Gallipoli. That was all inspired by the school history Europe trip our son was due to go on last year. He was due to commemorate ANZAC Day at the dawn service at Villers Bretonneux and I wanted him to know about our family members who served there. Needless to say, my research project rapidly expanded, and that our son’s trip was cancelled.

Fast-forwarding through to 2021, I came across this letter addressed to Ethel Turner’s Sunbeam’s page:

A NURSE

“When I grow up I would like to be a nurse, so that I could look after poor sick people. If there happened to be another war I would go and look after the wounded soldiers. My daddy died of wounds at Gallipoli, where there were not enough nurses to look after the soldiers. I would love to wear the nice clean uniform of a nurse, and be in the children’s hospital amongst the little sick babies, as I love babies, and I don’t like to hear them crying. When I see the returned nurses with their badges I feel sure I am going to be one. I hope little girls will want to be the same so that there will be enough nurses for the poor soldiers if any more wars begin.

— Souvenir Prize and Blue “Sun” Card to Brenda Taylor (9), Greenock, Piper-street, Leichhardt — a little girl gallant enough, after her loss, to want to continue in the footsteps of her heroic father[1].”

This was where I decided to take what I thought would be a short break from Gallipoli to explore the Sunbeams, and also re-read Seven Little Australians. Since then, I’ve been clicking away on eBay and anxiously awaiting my Ethel Turners to arrive in the post. So far I’ve also read The Family At Misrule, and The Cub is lined up alongside Captain Cub, Three Little Maids and I’ve currently studying Philippa Poole’s compilation: The Diaries of Ethel Turner and A.T. Yarwood’s biography From A Chair In The Sun. I’m being very patient because I’m sorely tempted to order Mother Meg so I can complete the Woolcot trilogy. However, I haven’t just bought these books to look pretty on the shelf. I want to understand Ethel Turner as a writer. What created her? What inspired her? Who was she and what did she mean to the readers of her books and children’s columns?

While I have just started out on this journey, albeit in a rather obsessed books and all manner, I would like to paint a portrait of an Ethel Turner who was a philosopher and educator as much as an author. She created worlds and decided which characters lived and died most famously in Seven Little Australians where the much loved Judy suddenly dies, and in the sequel where Baby and Meg also stare death in the face and I won’t spoil the story by saying anything more. Ethel Turner also wrote through the depression of the 1890’s, the horrors of the Great War. Moreover, she stopped writing novels in 1930 following the death of her adored daughter, Jean Curlewis. Ethel Turner had also faced death with her own tragedies losing her father when she was two, and her step-father when she was eight. Life wasn’t meant to be easy, but did it have to be that hard?

I warn you that this blog will not be written in any great sequence, and will jump around a bit. For better or worse, that’s the way my mind works and thankfully I can categorize my posts into some kind of order as I go.

Lastly, let me introduce myself. My name is Rowena Curtin. I have considered myself a writer since I was about ten and writing stories at Galston Public School in Sydney’s Hills District. I went on to attend Pymble Ladies’ College where I also studied Speech and Drama. That was how I first came across Seven Little Australians, when I was about 12, and I had to memorise and recite a passage of dialogue from the book. Being an all-girls’ school, Ethel Turner was very popular although I don’t remember the death of Judy, which might suggest I hadn’t actually read the whole book. During high school, I wrote anguished poetry about unrequited love, which I surreptitiously shared via notes in class. Thank goodness they weren’t intercepted. I attended the University of Sydney 1988-1991. I graduated with Honours in History, looking at the arrival of Modernist art and literature in Australia, but I had also studied Australian Literature and Australian Women’s History. During my time at Sydney University, I was president of the Sydney Writers’ Society, Inkpot for two years performed my poetry on campus, at Gleebooks, Chippendale’s Reasonably Good Cafe and various festivals.

Performing at the Shakespeare Bookshop August 1992

In 1992, I finally managed to escape to Europe where I went backpacking for a year. One of the highlights was spending a month in Paris which included a solo poetry reading at the famous Shakespeare Bookshop then owned by it’s legendary eccentric proprietor, George Whitman. I returned to Australia and put poetry on the shelf to pursue a career in marketing. This trajectory was only altered by an acute, life-threatening auto-immune disease and while I was in hospital, my husband brought in my laptop and I started writing seriously again. While exploring writing for children myself, I moved onto biography and historic research. I have also been producing what I guess is a reasonably successful blog at Beyond the Flow: https://beyondtheflow.wordpress.com/ I am also married with two teenagers and three dogs. Our house is the personification of “Misrule”.

Lastly, I am also viewing Ethel Turner through a different lens. My father is actually one of seven children himself. So, I have some familiarity of what it is to come from a large family. Moreover, my dad’s youngest sibling is only ten years older than me. So, I sort of tacked onto the end of the original family in a way, and unlike my younger cousins have crystal clear memories of the family home.

This photo was taken of my grandmother in the Australian Embassy in Washington in 1948.

However, the parallels with my dad’s family don’t end there. My father’s mother was international concert pianist, Eunice Gardiner. How she managed to have seven little Australians and still continue her career, has been a personal quest. As a fifteen year old, Eunice won the Vicars Travelling Scholarship and a year later after much fundraising, she left to take up a scholarship at the Royal Academy of Music in London with her mother as chaperone. In 1940, they returned to Australia during the London Blitz with Eunice under contract to tour with the ABC under the famous English conductor, Sir Thomas Beecham. In December, Eunice married my grandfather with a miniature grand piano on their wedding cake. Eunice speaks confidently in the press about continuing her career after marriage, which she stuck to despite her brother’s doubts. After the war was over, she spent a year in New York and Canada leaving the three boys at home. The eldest were sent to boarding school in Bowral while my Dad aged three remained at home with Dad, Gran and a housekeeper.

My grandmother on the right with her mother on the left who was every bit the wing beneath her wings.

After returning to family life, Australian Consolidated Press sent Eunice to cover the Festival of Britain and the opening of Festival Hall in 1951. She told me how she loved having a doorman and a bit of luxury over there and (reading between the lines) a break from being Mum. By this stage, there were four young boys at home. No doubt, in common with Ethel Turner, my grandmother struggled with juggling her almighty talent and passion for music with the love of her family. It was never an easy balance. She loved both passionately.

I don’t know where my cups of tea with Ethel Turner will take me. Moreover, I don’t know where they will take you either. However, just looking at the very shallow depths I’ve dipped into so far, we can only be changed. Changed for the much better as well.

I look forward to sharing this exhilarating journey with you!

Best wishes,

Rowena Curtin

Sources:

[1] Sun (Sydney, NSW : 1910 – 1954), Sunday 30 July 1922, page 2